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In 2014, he was arrested in the northern city of Rouen after a year-long investigation triggered by a complaint from the Collective of Civilian Parties for Rwanda (CPCR), which represents victims.

In the two other Rwandan genocide trials concluded in France, a former officer in the presidential guard, Pascal Simbikangwa, was given a 25-year sentence in 2014, while Octavien Ngenzi and Tito Barahira, two former mayors, received life sentences in 2016.

Under French law, any individual on French soil can be put on trial in the country.

Some 800,000 people -- Tutsis but also moderate Hutus -- were slaughtered by Hutu extremists over 100 days of ethnic violence in 1994.